Babylon 5: The Geometry of Shadows

A mysterious group known as the techno-mages passes through Babylon 5, attracting Londo’s attention. Ivanova gets a difficult diplomatic problem involving Drazi.

So this is the first time we meet Lord Refa, a Centauri with obvious influence and ambition. Londo agrees the two of them should work together on Behalf of the Centauri. They feel the Emperor is old and weak, and his son recently died leaving no clear successor.

Inspired by this and other recent events, when Londo sees some techno-mages he wants to get their approval as this would be a powerful symbol to the Centauri. (The first Emperor was given their approval.) Vir actually shows some backbone in trying to accomplish this, but is unsuccessful. So Londo manipulates Sheridan into getting involved. Elric, the chief techno-mage, exposes Londo and Sheridan is not pleased to put it mildly. Neither is Elric, who then haunts Londo’s quarters with holo-demons and such. Very hilarious, especially the part about Narn opera and Londo’s account buying up worthless stock.

Then comes a beautiful discussion of the nature of magic my Elric and Sheridan. Elric also explains why the Techno-mages are gathering. There is a coming darkness and they want to preserve their knowledge but not be used by the darkness. A nice touch by Elric, turning a crystal into an orange blossom for Sheridan. In the end Sheridan gives permission for them to leave. As a nice epilogue, Elric tells Londo he is touched by darkness. Warning him wouldn’t do any good, and if Londo were killed, someone would just take his place. But Elric does have some final words for Londo. He sees a great hand reaching out of the stars and millions of voices crying out. The hand is Londo’s, and the voices are the voices of his victims. Very nice foreshadowing here.

In the mean time, Garibaldi is struggling trying to decide whether to take his old job back or not.

Ivanova gets promoted to Lieutenant Commander, and as her first assignment, she is sent to work with the Drazi. They have a fight every five years to determine leadership. The only determining factor of the two competing sides are purple and green cloths drawn at random. This assignment becomes even more difficult when Ivanova gets in the middle of a Drazi fight and her foot is broken. Things go from bad to worse when the green Drazi start killing purple Drazi. The green Drazi even lay a trap for the hoppled Ivanova. Luckily, Garibaldi still is as sharp as ever and manages to figure out something is wrong and extracts Ivanova from the Drazi’s clutches. Ivanova even manages to come up with a clever solution. She takes the green cloth of leadership from the green leader. All the green Drazi now have to follow Ivanova, so he makes them all put on purple cloth. Now all the Drazi on the station are all one color again!

Thanks to this, Garibaldi gains the confidence to take back his old job. After all, no one knows the station like he does, or is as paranoid.

Lots of great moments in this episode. And just to set the record straight, I favor purple myself:)

Lord Refa, full of ambition and plots.

Green and purple Drazi explain the reason for their fighting to Ivanova.